Indigenous Innovation Research Articles

Movement as Medicine and Screendance as Survivance: Indigenous Reclamation and Innovation During Covid-19

Indigenous screendance challenges US settler colonial constructions that drive political, environmental, and global injustices, which the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated. This article analyzes online workshops taught in 2020 by Rulan Tangen, Founder and Director of DANCING EARTH CREATIONS, as "movement as medicine" and "screendance as survivance." By connecting Tangen's workshops to Indigenous peoples' historical and ongoing uses of dance and the digital sphere for wellbeing and survival, we show how and why these practices provide powerful possibilities to counter settler colonial concepts of anthropocentrism, Cartesian dualism, patriarchy, and chronological time. Tangen's teaching offers ways for humans and more-than-humans—meaning land, cosmos, nonhuman animals, water, and plants—to (re)connect, drawing on the past to imagine the future and building human solidarity, which we theorize as "homecoming." Ultimately, we link our concept of "homecoming" to the Land Back movement because of the vital connections among Indigenous bodies, sovereignty, and survival.

Development strategies for middle‐income countries in a digital world—Insights from modern trade economics

AbstractThe digitalisation of economic activities, combined with a secular slowdown in the growth of global output and trade, reduces the potential of traditional export‐oriented manufacturing as a development strategy. This paper takes a trade economics perspective to outline a possible response to the changed nature of industrialisation. The outlined response currently applies mainly to middle‐income countries but deserves attention also in longer‐term development strategies of low‐income countries. The paper argues that digital technologies affect trade costs through various mechanisms, which apply differently to manufactures and services and determine decisions of multi‐product firms on what to produce for what market. Emphasising big data analysis of customer preferences as an input to manufacturing, the paper finds that (i) industrialisation and service‐oriented development strategies are complements, rather than substitutes; (ii) access to data on customer preferences is an asset for developing countries; and (iii) data governance, which harnesses the increasing dependence of manufacturing on data, and innovation policies, which give greater importance to indigenous innovation, crucially augment the potential of industrialisation as a development strategy in a digital era.

Regional inequality of resident income and its determinants: A case study of Zhejiang Province, China

This paper focuses on the regional inequality of resident income in local China at the county or district level, and Zhejiang Province is set as the empirical case. It takes a geographic approach to detect the spatial distribution pattern of resident income, and explore the relationship with regional-specific socio-economic factors. The analytical framework proposed by us has been proved appropriate by the case study. Our study results show that in terms of the resident income level, there exists great regional gap in Zhejiang with the northeast wealthy cluster and much poorer cluster in the southwest. The disposable income of residents is mainly determined by commerce prosperity, urban intensity and technological capacity of local areas, while the effect of regional income, household deposits and industrial production are much less or no significant. Our findings for Zhejiang lead us to suggest that those local states seeking to improve people’s livelihood and income should not solely rely on the industrial or manufacturing expansion, but pay more attention to business environment, urban construction and indigenous innovation. Also, to narrow the significant regional gap of resident income, extra efforts should be made to push the regional cooperation system in economic development.

Traditional Food and Products to Achieve SDGs in India

The diversity of India has conserved through indigenous innovations, practices and skills and associated with community traditions and practices. The traditional food system plays a significant role in improving and strengthens Medicare system through improvement in the quality of life including health and nutritional status, food system with improving nutrient values, consumable products for other such as fermented food products like Sinki. A major proportion of the community is suffering from health problems such as Malnutrition, Malaria, Tuberculosis etc and also facing economic crisis due to minimum involvements of traditional knowledge, food and beverages, traditional food system and ignorance of their cultural acceptability in the modern health care, livelihood programme and development programme/policies. The Indigenous diet and tradition food system found helpful to fight with modern illnesses and potentially fulfill dietary recommendations for various micronutrients. The traditional fermented food/ beverage with cultural acceptability can also play an important role in the better livelihood of communities through enhanced food security and income generation via a valuable small scale enterprise option and marketable products. No poverty and Good health and Wellbeing are the most important goals of Sustainable Development-2030 will be achieved via wellbeing and development programme/policies with including culturally important traditional knowledge and traditional food of native and tribal comminutes. The present research paper aims to find out the socio-cultural and medicinal value of traditional food and products and also explore the possibilities of their marketing to achieve the SDGs.

From dugouts to double outriggers; Lexical insights into the development of Swahili nautical technology

The early history of nautical technology in the western Indian Ocean and adjoining parts of the eastern Africa coast is poorly understood. In the absence of evidence from shipwrecks, it has hitherto been based largely on the uncertain interpretation of a few documentary references and speculation surrounding technological parallels and assumed lexical resemblances. This paper examines some of the linguistic evidence in a more rigorous way, by undertaking a cross-dialectal comparison of names for watercraft and terms for outriggers in Swahili ( Kiswahili ), a Bantu language spoken on the islands and in scattered communities along the western seaboard of the Indian Ocean. The resulting analysis provides a new outline of the development of Swahili nautical technology and maritime culture, highlighting the key role played by particular boat forms, and the relative importance of indigenous innovation and different external influences, including the elusive impacts of Austronesian seafaring.

Institutional investors and the moral hazards of technology investment: Evidence from China

ABSTRACT This study investigates the impact of institutional ownership on the moral hazards of technology investment in China from 2003 to 2017. We use firms’ patent count data to test the quality and quantity of innovation, and apply a negative binomial regression to the baseline outcomes and a difference-in-difference model to control for endogeneity. The results show a significantly positive relationship between institutional investors and enterprise innovation. Particularly, mutual fund investors and qualified foreign institutional investors actively promote radical innovation, which minimizes the agency risks of enterprise innovation. However, bank and insurance fund investors tend to ignore the noise of technology investment, and instead prefer incremental innovation for enterprise growth. The study also analyzes the potential channels underlying these results. We find that institutional investors control CEOs’ career concerns and offer insurance against earnings sensitivity. Additionally, their supervisory role has a significant impact in controlling the agency risks of managers. Therefore, we propose that high-tech enterprises should consider the advantages of institutional investment in improving their innovation trajectories. The findings offer important policy implications for China’s indigenous innovation plans and indicate that institutional investors’ enthusiasm in enabling radical enterprise innovation is a valuable instrument for economic growth.

The New Whole State System: State-led Financialization, State-Private Fusion, and China’s Innovation Policies after 2008

This article joins ongoing efforts to reconceptualize the role of the state in capitalism through the experiences of China. Using tech companies owned by Tsinghua University as a case study, we offer a novel perspective on China’s post-2008 innovation system and the renewed significance of the state in economic restructuring. Drawing on existing research about the history of capitalism and China, we contextualize China’s innovation system within its own history of interacting with global capitalism and identify five distinct new features at the conjuncture of post-2008 macroeconomic and geopolitical transformation: mixed-ownership reform, Government Guided Investment Funds, local government financing platforms, transnational investments, and (re)consolidation of party-state leadership. These new features, we argue, are defining elements of the “new whole state system” (NWSS), an emerging innovation system that deploys new market-driven financial tools to reinvent China’s socialist “whole state system”. Through historically informed multilevel empirical research, this article problematizes the state-market dichotomy to show how the Chinese state has proactively cultivated, restructured, and participated in the market to promote indigenous innovation (i.e. innovation that depends on domestic research capacity). It also situates China’s post-2008 economic reform within the global financialization trend and presents the NWSS as a spatiotemporally specific response to the shared problems of technological dependency and slowing economic growth. China’s response offers important policy lessons for other countries about the possibilities and limitations of using financial tools to restructure market institutions and direct excess liquidity to promote indigenous innovation.

Adoption and Dis-Adoption of Sustainable Agriculture: A Case of Farmers’ Innovations and Integrated Fruit Fly Management in Kenya

The invasive fruit fly Bactrocera dorsalis poses a major threat to the production and trade of mango in sub-Saharan Africa. Farmers devise different innovations to manage the pest in an attempt to minimize yield loss and production costs while maximizing revenues. Using survey data obtained from Embu County, Kenya, we analyzed farmers’ knowledge and perception as regards the invasive fruit fly, their innovations for the management of the pest, and the determinants of their adoption and dis-adoption decisions of recently developed and promoted integrated pest management (IPM) technologies for suppression of the pest. The results show that farmers consider fruit flies as a major threat to mango production (99%) and primarily depend on pesticides (90%) for the management of the pest. Some farmers (35%) however use indigenous methods to manage the pest. Though farmers possess good knowledge of different IPM strategies, uptake is relatively low. The regression estimates show that continued use of IPM is positively associated with the gender and education of the household head, size of a mango orchard, knowledge on mango pests, training, contact with an extension officer, and use of at least one non-pesticide practice for fruit fly management, while IPM dis-adoption was negatively correlated with the size of the mango orchard, practice score and use of indigenous innovations for fruit fly management. We recommend enhancing farmer′s knowledge through increased access to training programs and extension services for enhanced adoption of sustainable management practices for B. dorsalis.

Scrutinizing innovation performance of family firms in efficiency-driven environment

Although family firms constitute the bulk of economic activity in many world economies, their behavior is still far from understood. This is particularly true when it comes to innovation activities of family firms in efficiency-driven environments with limited indigenous innovation potential, low quality of innovation systems and weak innovation policies. The sample consisting of 293 family firms and we reveal that in such setting internal competencies, collaboration, and public support facilitate innovativeness and diminish the negative effects of firm maturity and innovation barriers among family firms. Tacit R&D knowledge and internal absorptive capacity outweigh the negative effects on innovation of family firms.

Path for China's high-tech industry to participate in the reconstruction of global value chains

With the deepening of the international division of labor, the change of the national interest distribution pattern, and the spread of de-globalization in some developed countries, the Global Value Chains (GVCs) are undergoing a new round of large-scale restructuring, and the situation of GVCs being dominated by developed countries is changing. Industries of different countries have different paths of participation in the reconstruction of GVCs, including active embedding in GVCs, constructing National Value Chains, and leading to the creation of Regional Value Chains (RVCs). Different high-tech industries in China choose different ways to participate in reconstruction of GVCs due to their different levels of competitiveness. Based on the Value-Added Revealed Comparative Advantage index, this study constructs the basis and criteria for choosing the path of reconstruction of GVCs and designs the appropriate path for Chinese high-tech industry. Pharmaceutical manufacturing and transportation equipment manufacturing industry tend to constructing National Value Chains against the background of globalization, and the chemical products manufacturing, electrical and electronic equipment manufacturing, and optical equipment manufacturing industries tend toward “indigenous innovation” while dominating the RVC reconstruction path, integratinging global and domestic Value Chains, to achieve the domestic and international double cycle goals.

Global relevance of scaling African indigenous entrepreneurship

This research focuses on the way African indigenous entrepreneurs (IEs) use at hand resources and strategies to overcome challenges in resource constrained and munificent environments. Although there have been considerable past progresses in the technology, innovation and entrepreneurship literature concerning non-predictive strategies, our understanding of the relevance of bricolage in Africa context remains limited. This paper examines the issue of global relevance of scaling African indigenous innovation; and focuses on how IEs can scale their businesses. We relied on qualitative cases of IEs based on semi-structured interviews to explore the practical context of using non-predictive strategies to solve contemporary problems through the more cost-effective and environmentally friendly solutions. Specifically, we argue that IEs can scale their indigenous solutions by leveraging on bricolage to provide globally relevant solutions. The sample consists of twenty indigenous entrepreneurs from Nigeria who operate in resource constrained and munificent contexts. We present bricolage theory as a preliminary way of understanding how IEs operate and may be scaled. The paper enhances appreciation of the scaling processes of indigenous entrepreneurs based on forms of bricolage; and it extends the application of bricolage to resource munificent contexts. Finally, we outline the implications of the findings for research and practice.

Digital platforms for development: Foundations and research agenda

AbstractDigital platforms hold a central position in today's world economy and are said to offer a great potential for the economies and societies in the global South. Yet, to date, the scholarly literature on digital platforms has largely concentrated on business while their developmental implications remain understudied. In part, this is because digital platforms are a challenging research object due to their lack of conceptual definition, their spread across different regions and industries, and their intertwined nature with institutions, actors and digital technologies. The purpose of this article is to contribute to the ongoing debate in information systems and ICT4D research to understand what digital platforms meanfordevelopment. To do so, we first define what digital platforms are and differentiate between transaction and innovation platforms, and explain their key characteristics in terms of purpose, research foundations, material properties and business models. We add the socio‐technical context digital platforms operate and the linkages to developmental outcomes. We then conduct an extensive review to explore what current areas, developmental goals, tensions and issues emerge in the literature on platforms and development and identify relevant gaps in our knowledge. We later elaborate on six research questions to advance the studies on digital platforms for development: on indigenous innovation, digital platforms and institutions, on exacerbation of inequalities, on alternative forms of value, on the dark side of platforms and on the applicability of the platform typology for development.

Will Intellectual Property Rights Policy Increase Foreign Direct Investment and Promote Technological Innovation?

In this paper, we discuss the effects of intellectual property rights (IPRs) on FDI and indigenous innovation and the overall effects of IPR on the Southern and Northern countries. Our model predicts that tighter IPR is good for FDI and indigenous innovation; however, the effects vary according to the initial resource endowment such as skill level and absorptive capacity. By a game theory model, we also find that tighter IPR benefits both sides if the innovation is the common knowledge to both players, and it improves indigenous innovation and welfare in a short term, but they will emerge in the long run. We also discuss the further direction to an empirical study. Finally, we make the following conclusion: IPR is part of business environment, and tighter IPR in progress is good for boosting welfare of both sides. It is time to build a better environment for IPR, but the cost of patent enforcement policy and the trade barrier must be taken into account.

Analysis of the causal effects of imports and foreign direct investments on indigenous innovation in developing countries

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to analyze the performance of indigenous innovation in developing countries in the era of trade liberalization. It analyzes indigenous innovation from research and development (R&D) investments to innovation output and its effect on economic growth.Design/methodology/approachThe sample for this study includes 20 middle-income countries across five continents for the period between 1994 and 2018. The study employs the Crepon Duguet and Mairessec CDM model in a panel data setting to do a multistage analysis of the innovation process. A vector error correction model VECM is employed to test for Granger causality between the variables investigated.FindingsThe results show that imports and foreign direct investments (FDI) have generally have short-run and long-run causal effects on domestic R&D investments. In regions where imports and FDI do not have individual causal effects on innovation output, a joint increase in each of them and R&D have both short-run and long-run causal effects. Indigenous innovation is a significant contributor to economic growth when a country can produce and export novel products.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample is only limited to developing economies, and due to the unavailability of data, only 20 countries were captured.Practical implicationsImported products and FDI are critical to the innovation drive when such activities are targeted at enhancing indigenous innovation from R&D to the production of new products. Hence, policy formulation should encourage the absorption of foreign technologies that serve as inputs to indigenous innovation.Originality/valueThis paper focuses specifically on indigenous innovation and analyses the influence of foreign technologies in this effort. It tests the moderating roles of imports and FDI in the relationship between R&D and innovation output, concluding that both variables enhance the effect of R&D on innovation output.

Indigenous Knowledge and Vocational Education: Marginalisation of Traditional Medicinal Treatments in Rwandan TVET Animal Health Courses

This study explores Rwandan ethno-veterinary knowledge and the degree to which this knowledge is reflected in the country’s technical and vocational education and training (TVET) instruction. The knowledge considered is the Indigenous medicinal knowledge used by rural Rwandan livestock farmers to treat their cattle. Through interviews with farmers, TVET graduates and TVET teachers, and an examination of the current TVET Animal Health curriculum, the research identifies a neglect of Indigenous knowledge in the curriculum, despite the fact that local farmers use numerous Indigenous medicinal innovations to treat their animals. The focus of the Rwanda’s TVET Animal Health curriculum is on Western-origin modern veterinary practices. The authors argue that this leaves Rwandan TVET Animal Health graduates unprepared for optimal engagement with rural farmers and with the full range of potential treatments.

COVID-19 Patenting Activity in Higher Educational Institutions

In India, 2.93 crore people had been succumbed to COVID-19 on 5 June 2020.1 Containing a series of unparalleled catastrophic event that required hedging on innovation and technologies developed by industry and academia. The purpose of the paper is to identify technologies developed at academia related to COVID-19 pandemic. The exploration by employing PATENTSCOPE COVID-19 functionality, 85 institutions were found to accumulate 1427 out of more than 6000 patents over 20 years COVID-19 technologies under 10 classifications entertained by the World Intellectual Property Organization. Finally, the reflection of COVID-19 in response to selected Indian higher educational institutions is inconclusive. The results imply policy makers to encourage the indigenous innovations in all the functionalities in combating the pandemic.

Imitation, Innovation, and Technological Complexity: Foreign Knowledge Spillovers in China

In the last two decades, the world has witnessed the rise of Chinese innovation. China, once a manufacturing hub for the West, has become a major player in the development of many new technologies. We assess how foreign knowledge spillovers spurred this transformation. To this end, we assemble a rich micro-level data set of firm patenting and accounting information. The aggregate data show that over time Chinese firms have gained leadership over foreign firms in China both in terms of production and patenting. Nevertheless, the aggregate trends mask rich industry heterogeneity pointing to the limits of cross-firm knowledge spillovers. While foreign firms have lost market leadership in low-tech (simple) industries, they have maintained strong leadership in high-tech (complex) industries. Exploring foreign knowledge spillovers using patent citations data, we show that only firms in low-tech (simple) industries eventually decrease their reliance on foreign knowledge for innovation. Our findings suggest that imitation is a path to indigenous innovation only in low-tech (simple) industries and point to the need of industry-specific policies.

Assessing the asymmetric linkages between foreign direct investments and indigenous innovation in developing countries: A non-linear panel auto-regressive distributed lag approach

Background: The contributions of indigenous innovation and foreign direct investments (FDI) inflows are critical elements of economic growth and hence very important for developing economies. FDI inflows have been recognised as having a direct influence on innovation in host countries. The relationship between these two variables is explored and well documented in literature. However, these studies have focused on linear relationships between FDI and indigenous innovation, ignoring a possible asymmetric relationship between them. Aim: The current study aims to analyse the existence of hidden cointegration and asymmetries between the two variables using a non-linear approach. Setting: The focus of this study is on developing countries. Five countries are selected from the regions of Africa, Asia, Europe and South America. These countries are chosen on the basis of economic status (all countries are developing countries) and data availability. Methods: The study employs panel data of 20 developing countries from 1993 to 2017. The study employs the non-linear auto-regressive distributed lag model to test for an asymmetric relationship between the variables. The variables are deconstructed into their negative and positive components to identify possible hidden cointegration and asymmetries that exist between them. This method allows for the detection of long-run asymmetric relationships in a non-linear fashion. Results: The empirical findings show that a long-run cointegration and asymmetric relationship exists between the negative and positive components of FDI and indigenous innovation. For the four regions, positive changes in FDI directly influence positive changes in indigenous innovation. Negative changes in FDI have no effect on the positive changes in indigenous innovation in the countries under study. However, negative changes in FDI influence negative changes in indigenous innovation across the four regions. Conclusion: FDI inflows have a positive and significant effect on indigenous innovation in developing countries, and reduction in FDI can lead to reduction in innovation output in the long term. Policy directions in developing countries will be effective if they are centred on non-linear relationships between the investigated variables.

Informing Canadian Innovation Policy Through a Decolonizing Lens on Indigenous Entrepreneurship and Innovation

While Indigenous entrepreneurship is associated with significant economic promise, Indigenous innovation continues to be invisible in Canadian policy contexts. This article examines how Indigenous entrepreneurial activities are framed in government policy, potentially leading to another wave of active exploitation of Indigenous lands, peoples, and knowledges. The article first discusses the concepts of Indigenous entrepreneurship and innovation through a decolonizing lens, drawing links to education. Then, it provides a set of rationales for why governments need to re-think and prioritize Indigenous entrepreneurship. Next, it maps the current federal government initiatives in this policy sector. Drawing from the Indigenous entrepreneurship ecosystem approach (Dell & Houkamau, 2016; Dell et al., 2017), the article argues that a more comprehensive policy perspective guiding Indigenous entrepreneurship programs should inform Canadian innovation policy. Individual voices from 13 Indigenous entrepreneurs in Manitoba point to three core issues: (a) relationships with the land and the community; (b) the relevance of (higher) education and training; and (c) the importance of cultural survival and self-determination. The article makes an argument for a systemic decolonizing change in how Indigenous innovation is approached in government policyand programs, supported by the work of higher education institutions.

Heterogeneous impacts of environmental regulations and foreign direct investment on green innovation across different regions in China

Green innovation (GI) is an important way to realize the sustainable development. This paper contributes to the existing literature by analyzing the effects of different environmental regulations on green innovation from a heterogeneous perspective. We also compare the impacts of indigenous innovation input and foreign technology spillover on green innovation. The dataset of this paper covers a panel of China's 30 provinces from 2003 to 2017. The results of Systematic Generalized Method of Moments (SYS-GMM) show that command-and-control regulation (CER) and informal regulation (IER) have significant “Porter's effect” on green innovation while market-based regulation (MER) negatively affects green innovation in China. Inward foreign direct investment (IFDI) plays a positive role in developing China's green innovation thus, validating the “Pollution Halo hypothesis”. Outward direct investment (OFDI) has a reverse green technique effect on China's green innovation. In addition, the positive effect of indigenous innovation input on green innovation is larger than that of foreign technology spillover from IFDI and OFDI. Moreover, the strengthening of CER weakens the positive effect of IFDI on green innovation. By contrast, the increase of IER can promote the reverse green technology spillover effect of OFDI on green innovation. On the basis of results, the government should attract green inward FDI and invest on foreign technology-intensive industries to obtain green technology spillover and stimulate green innovation.